


Openly Hiding

by DM (altilis)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, M/M, POV Outsider, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-27
Updated: 2009-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/DM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christopher Pike finds out about the relationship between Kirk and Spock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Openly Hiding

  
Christopher is initially surprised when he wheels into work one day and finds, sitting on his desk, a formal request from the _Enterprise_ 's new captain to have Commander Spock officially dubbed the ship's First Officer. If memory serves him correctly—and he's sure that the Centurian slug didn't take out too much detail—this runs contrary to everything he's seen conspire between the two men, as well as everything he's heard of their working chemistry.

He lifts the data pad and idly clicks through its many pages, noting that it has all the trappings of a legitimate request: references, brief dossiers, and a personal statement from the applicant himself. So it's not a prank. Christopher scans it one more time. He's not even really reading the references: he knows Spock, and he couldn't think of a better first officer, but really? From James T. Kirk?

He picks up the pen and scribbles his signature into the approval box, before relaying it back to the administrative offices. He leans back in his chair, glances out the window over the bay, and thinks what a strange morning it's been.

\---

That evening over a small dinner of spaghetti and toast, he tells his wife about what has happened at work.

Suddenly, right as he's about to finish up his piece of toast, his wife insists that he invite the young Captain over for dinner on his next shore leave. It's only proper, she says after a sip of red wine, that I get to meet the boy who saved you.

Christopher is half-way into forming a rebuttal about how Kirk isn't a 'boy,' at the age of twenty-five, when he stops himself. After two decades of marriage, he realizes that arguing isn't going to get him anywhere and he simply nods and agrees to invite the young captain over at the soonest opportunity.

\---

Luck and fortune seem to be in his favour (or, perhaps, in his wife's favour), as not more than three weeks later he sees Kirk walking around the shuttle-port just as he is going to meet another admiral arriving that morning. He calls over to him, waves his hand, and Kirk jogs over to him through the hustle and bustle of the terminal.

They trade greetings, and then Christopher gets right down to the issue. Kirk doesn't seem to mind the invitation, but he'll need to see the rest of his schedule and he'll have to do it next shore leave because this one only lasts a day—it would be hardly fair to his wife.

He, of course, agrees, and gives Kirk all the time he needs to decide if he wants to accept. He's almost to asking how the Enterprise is holding up, when her first officer comes up to Kirk's shoulder. It surprises Christopher at first, how close Spock is standing next to his Captain, but he smothers it with quick thinking and self-awareness honed from years in the political arena of Starfleet.

Spock nods his greeting to his former Captain, but soon after his arrival (and murmuring something into Kirk's ear that he can't quite catch), the two of them have to excuse themselves, and leave the terminal side-by-side. He watches them talk to each other as they walk off, all fast-paced banter and a grinning Kirk. Somehow--he can't quite put a finger on it--he thinks Kirk has other reasons for postponing his decision.

\---

Kirk's initial RSVP is phrased in the form of a question: "Can I bring a friend?"

Christopher smiles to himself, leans back in his chair (he does this a lot, and thinks to himself that he must be getting old), and taps his finger idly against the arm rest as he ponders how to reply. Vaguely amused that Kirk is going to show up at his San Francisco home with some buxom Orion girl at his hip, he responds, "Of course."

That'll show his wife. He'll never have to invite anyone over for dinner parties again.

\---

The day comes around with little pomp and circumstance. His wife has thrown much larger dinner parties before, so just one boy (as she insists on calling him) and his date aren't going to be much of a problem, so she puts the roast in the oven in the late afternoon and begins to assemble ingredients and recipe books not long after that.

At a quarter to six, through the open window of his parlour, Christopher hears the low hum of a taxi's engine pull up to the front of the house. This is soon followed by the murmur of voices muted partially by the ocean breeze; undoubtedly, his guests have arrived.

He wheels over to the window and pushes aside the curtains to catch a glance at them before he has to go over and answer the door and—if he were not already sitting down, would have probably needed to, or else be floored by the shock. James T. Kirk, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and no tie, is bent through the window of the taxi and paying the fare. Emerging from the cab is his date: not some dressed-up Orion girl, not some high-paid escort Kirk can now afford on his inflated salary, but Commander Spock, First Officer of the Enterprise.

At first Christopher doesn't recognize him because he's not dressed in any kind of Starfleet uniform. It appears Kirk has pressured Spock into looking more human, blending in with the locals, because the half-Vulcan looks as uncomfortable (without actually being obviously uncomfortable) as ever in a vested charcoal suit, silver tie standing out, though tucked in, against a powder-blue dress shirt.

He wheels himself out of the parlour to the entrance hall, just in time to answer the doorbell and welcome the two young officers into his home.

\---

The night goes on well. The only trouble is that Spock can't have the roast ("Vulcans!" Christopher imagines his wife murmuring into the refrigerator), but Christopher's wife is skilled enough to whip up a generous supplement of eggplant casserole and Waldorf salad along with the usual mashed potatoes, so in the end everything is fine. Afterward, the men retire into the parlour with one bottle of Saurian brandy and two glasses (and a glass of water for Spock) while his wife puts away the dishes.

Christopher moves into an armchair, politely declining Kirk and Spock's offer of assistance, and watches as the two younger men settle next to each other on the couch across the coffee table from him. The fire, a purely vestigial part of the parlour, crackles to life at the flick of a switch on the inside of the arm rest, and a warmth rolls through the room.

They discuss Starfleet matters, because throughout dinner they've been all consciously avoiding work, preferring to focus (at least on his wife's part) the bachelors' personal lives, poking and prodding like a mother and expressing her thanks not once, but twice, for their heroism concerning her husband. As Christopher sips his brandy, he asks Kirk about the state of the Enterprise, the nature of their missions, how the crew is holding together. They both know he, as an admiral, can look up this information in the administrative memory banks, but it's something else to hear it from the ship's captain.

While he's taking in Kirk's answers (and Spock's occasional supplements), he's watching the dynamic between the two of them. They sit shoulder to shoulder, touching just enough so that it seems accidental to the casual observer. They glance between each other more often than friends might, but only until the other gets shy and glances away. Christopher suspects a hesitance and an agreement among the two of them, one intimately related to Spock wearing a suit and Kirk shifting every so often so that his hand 'accidentally' brushes his first officer's.

Inside, he's amused at the unlikelihood of it all.

\---

After dinner, he sits in bed, staring at the projection on the opposite wall as the evening news rolls through on low volume. His wife sits next to him thumbing through a magazine he didn't even knew he had the subscription too.

He's zoning out as the nice reporter girl talks about the weather (not that it ever changes in San Francisco), 68 Fahrenheit with a light breeze, when his wife remarks out of the blue what a nice couple that young captain and his boyfriend were.

Christopher smirks, always surprised by how much more perceptive she is than him, and leans back against his pillows. He murmurs his agreement with her.

\---

He's keeping an eye out for them now. He doesn't want to report them (though he probably should), but he wants to see how well they can restrain themselves in public, and how long this nonsense can last. Much to his surprise, he sees them—together—more often than ever now, as the Enterprise is always going out into dangerous territory and coming back with a damaged hull or exhausted dilithium crystals or melted circuits. As Christopher wheels around Starfleet headquarters and the rest of San Francisco proper, juggling his own political games, he sees the two of them walking around in uniform—and not.

Once, he sees them taking a stroll near the academy. He guesses they're probably doing it for the nostalgia—or at least, Kirk is, and Spock is just following. They don't do anything rash: they keep their physical distance (though still managing to walk side-by-side, so close, but not touching), and occasionally sign some autographs. When he leaves to survey the new incoming class of recruits, Kirk is having a grand old time being famous and Spock stands by his side, with brief flashes of annoyance flickering across his face.

When he's at the terminal again, he catches a glimpse of them out of the corner of his eye as the shuttle he's waiting for comes in to land. He doesn't wave them down this time, but keeps a cautious and curious silence. They're walking briskly through the crowds of people, rushing to get out of uniform and into the city. He might have imagined it but he thinks—is rather sure that—he sees Kirk grasp Spock's hand for a brief moment, before they disappear around the corner and out of sight.

\---

It goes on like this for at least a year, with their arrival on Earth coming in random and short intervals. When he sees them, he's usually so busy he forgets the very next day that he ever saw them. That was before they stopped being subtle.

It's not really their fault that he sees them. They're off-duty, and so is he. His wife and he are going on a walk along Stinson Beach during a weekday (because even admirals get vacation time). Practically nobody is on the beach except the independently wealthy and delinquent teenagers, and nobody cares who you are because they don't want to be witnesses to their own truancy.

He's hovering through the sand (conventional wheels are too difficult to maneuver in soft sand), hand-in-hand with his wife and his Vizsla splashing about the water, when he spots them. They're not in uniform, but their combination of light-and-dark, not to mention Spock's Vulcan features, make them easy enough to recognize to his trained eyes. There's a towel or two stretched out, a large beach umbrella blocking the immediate peek-a-boo sun, and Christopher knows that's the extent of their little universe. Kirk looks more intent on exploring Spock's mouth than people-watching, and Spock lets himself be distracted momentarily, even if a moment later he does push Kirk away and regain composure (with just a second's delay).

Christopher suspects that Kirk is getting daring, impatient even.

And he further suspects that he's right. More than once he silently wheels by one empty corridor of Starfleet headquarters to glimpse Kirk holding both of Spock's hands, trapping him where he stands so he can whisper something lewd in his ear.

Again, as he went backstage at a conference on ethics outside the Federation to meet a captain from another ship, he overhears Kirk's voice and Spock's clinical murmur from a crack in a dressing room door. His passing glimpse reflects the mirror image of Spock in the chair and Kirk hovering over him, foreheads pressed together and hands sliding up each other's dress uniform shirts.

After all of these chance encounters, Christopher chuckles to himself, and everyone wonders why he's in such a good mood all the time.

\---

But he can't leave them to their own devices any longer.

The last straw occurs in the Academy itself. It seems that the two of them have finally settled that Kobayashi Maru issue that started the rift between them but—perhaps not in the way anybody but Kirk would have intended. There are no security cameras in the area where the simulation takes place, but it's his keen ear that hears a first-year cadet talking about "two officers [he] saw going at it in the KM sim room." Christopher tells his secretary to get a hold of the two officers in question that afternoon, and he would like a face-to-face conference with them as soon as possible.

  
When they finally stroll into his office, the only one in the room who seems unaware of the meeting's purpose is Kirk, who fidgets and shifts in his seat and is generally uncomfortable all around. Spock sits stoic, as always.

"Kirk," Christopher addresses the young Captain—he really is a boy, isn't he?—leaning forward on his desk, hands folded on the wooden surface in front of him. "I know you know why you're here."

He watches Kirk open his mouth perhaps half a dozen times before he sighs, slumps in his chair, and seems resigned to his fate. "Yeah."

"Might I interject, Admiral," Spock speaks now, eyes cool and unwavering as he looks at Christopher. "That any accusations brought against the Captain and myself must be supported with evidence?"

"Yeah!" Kirk latches onto this new spirit of defiance, which only simmers slightly in his partner. He bolts up in his seat, excitement renewed. "So if you're going to report us, you'd better have something more than just rumours to back you up!"

Christopher laughs and laughs, puzzling Kirk and causing Spock's expression to change just slightly towards confusion. He leans back in his chair and regards the two young officers in front of him.

"I might remind you, Mister Spock, that my knowledge of regulations is just as strong as yours," Spock looks as flustered as he'll ever look (which isn't much). Kirk remains confused, eyes narrowed and head cocked to the side. "And I very well know I'll need evidence if I want to bring anything up with the rest of the admiralty. But the rate at which you two are going, you may just give the proof to them, yourselves."

"What do you mean?" Kirk asks, incredulous and perhaps playing dumb out of habit. Spock shifts his eyes to the floor and knows exactly what Christopher is talking about.

"What I mean, Jim," He still addresses the young Captain in paternal tones; he can't deny his fondness for him. "Is that your demands on your first officer are beginning to be noticed by others. For instance: the Kobayashi Maru terminal. Really?" Kirk flushes and Spock keeps his eyes averted. They're both silent. He continues, propping his elbows on the armrests of the chair.

"It's none of my business what the two of you do on the beach, or in the privacy of your quarters. But you're treading dangerous ground when you start to test the boundaries of public privacy. You'll get caught with your pants down one of these days," His tone takes a serious turn. "And they won't simply brush it off, like I will."

The two officers are looking at him now, not quite believing his words or his mercy, but—in Spock's mind—knowing it is his only logical course of action. They hang onto his every word. "So I'm warning you: don't flaunt your passion around so blindly," The emphasis, here, is on Kirk: Christopher's eyes never leave his face. "Or you will be separated, end of story. Understood?" Kirk bobs his head up and down in understanding, while Spock gives a short nod.

"Good. Dismissed."

They get up in unison, silent and feeling the pain of discovery, but Christopher knows it won't last long. Before they step outside the doors, Kirk has already found Spock's hand in his, and he catches a glimpse of a teasing grin before the elevator closes on the captain's smug expression.

\---

The reporter girl is talking about the never-changing weather again (68, with a light breeze) as Christopher tells his wife about the confrontation, among other things. She listens with a nod, thumbing through another magazine he doesn't recognize. After a few moments of quiet between the two of them, she remarks that she's confident those two will stay out of trouble.

This time, Christopher is inclined to disagree with her.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt on the STXI kink meme, [here.](http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink/1886.html?thread=2868062#t2868062)


End file.
